Chapter Four
No one liked Walt Morgan. In 1979, at the Building Seven Christmas party, an anonymous benefactor had given him a book titled The Compleat Asshole. He'd thought it was a joke, because he thought of himself as essentially a pretty nice guy. If on occasion he had to be a hard-nose, if he had to crack the proverbial whip now and again, it was because he was the boss, and that's what bosses were expected to do. Everyone knew it, and everyone respected it. And everyone, he was convinced, down deep in their heart of hearts, really liked him.
He was carrying a sheaf of Employee Performance Charts from Building Seven to Personnel through Building Eight's basement corridors when he became aware that something was following him. The basement corridors in Building Eight were not nearly as dismal as the subbasement corridors in Building Nine, where Tammy Levine had made such a mess. The walls of Building Eight's basement corridors were festooned with employees' photographs: some in black and white, some in color, some eight by ten inches, some five by seven, most of them distinctly amateurish, but all of them bearing the unmistakable stamp of someone who's tried hard. There were the sad faces of boys, the black-and-white geometry of skyscrapers, the antics of pups and kittens, the bucolic pleasantness of sagging barns and tumbledown farmhouses. Walt Morgan liked these photographs. He thought it was good and right that employees of the Eastman Kodak Company should be photographers. It was like patriotism, esprit de corps, it showed loyalty, and he noted mentally as many names as he could for inclusion on his monthly Employee Evaluation Charts. These were graphs, mostly-with a few short paragraphs of explanation-that showed the month-to-month variation of individual employees in five areas: "Work Performance,”“Tardiness,”“Fraternizing,”“Job Interest," and "Loyalty." Each area was rated on a scale from one to ten. If any employee's six-month average of all five areas fell below six, the employee was subject to a reprimand. Twelve months below six meant mandatory transferral to a lower job classification. The charts he was carrying today were all in that category. Seven of the one hundred workers assigned to him were being reassigned to lower-paying jobs. It was hard-nosed, sure, and maybe, as he'd been told more than once, his chart and graph system was just a tad subjective ("What the hell do you mean by 'Loyalty,' Walt, and 'Job Interest'? My God, as long as the job gets done…"), but that was okay, too, because he'd point out, he hadn't been made the boss for nothing. His opinion mattered.
In its human state, the thing following Walt professed to dislike him just as much as everyone else. But in its human state, it also saw Walt for what he was-a small-minded man who'd been assigned to a job that was too large for him. And in its human state, the thing secretly forgave Walt his shortcomings (though to have said it aloud would have been social suicide), because square pegs cannot fit into round holes, no matter how hard you push.
In its present state, it didn't give a shit. It had an awful, devouring passion and need, and Walt was close at hand. Walt had flesh-a lot of it-and blood-enough to paint a barn-and Walt had a life-force within him that the thing desperately needed to still.
The thing whimpered. It was a good thirty feet behind Walt, just around a turn in the corridor. It whimpered because the need within it had come close to making it numb, like the promise of an orgasm so intense that screams won't do it justice.
Walt turned his head slightly, kept walking, clutched his sheaf of Employee Evaluation Charts close to his side as if whoever had made the noise behind him was intent on stealing them.
The thing whimpered again, longer, and Walt glanced back. "Who goes there? Who goes there?" he said, chuckled falsely, and walked faster.
The thing growled. It was not unlike the growl of a large dog-deep and resonant, so Walt's body broke out in goose bumps and his eyes frantically searched the corridor for a doorway he might try. One, several feet ahead and to his left, was simply marked "19," and the other, several yards farther ahead, and also on the left, had the word "AIR" on it in black, Walt had no idea why. He stepped quickly over to the door marked "19," tried the knob, cursed because it was locked, and heard the thing behind him growl yet again. "Oh, fuck!" Walt whispered. He tried the knob again, frantically and in vain. And the thing thirty feet behind him began rapidly closing the distance. He heard the muffled scrape and shuffle of its feet on the bare cement floor; again he whispered, "Oh, fuck!" and added, almost instantly, "Please-" and glanced back. He saw the thing. It stood very still for a brief moment under one of the ceiling lights.
And Walt laughed at it. Because for just a moment-long enough that the adrenaline pumping through him subsided and he felt immense relief: Shit, I'm not going to have to feel pain, after all!- he was certain that he was being made the brunt of a joke. Because everyone knew that Harry Simons had proclaimed himself the victim of a werewolf. And poor Tammy Levine, whose insides had made such a godawful mess in Building Nine's subbasement corridors, had been made to look like the victim of a werewolf. But of course, since there were no werewolves-just as there were no trolls, no gnomes, nor fairies-this… thing standing before him under the blue-white glow of the ceiling light was only someone dressed up like a werewolf (and in a suit that was getting a little seamy, a little frayed at the edges, even a little smelly), someone whose sense of humor was tacky at best, someone who-once his or her identity had been discovered-would very quickly be transferred to a lower job classification. But Walt was not a hopelessly stupid man. Just limited. And he realized within the space of only a couple of heartbeats that the creature under the ceiling light was precisely what it appeared to be-a slavering, misshapen, murderous, and merciless thing that was going to make him its next victim.
He managed these words at a low, harsh whisper, his voice quaking: "Not too much pain. Please!"
And the thing beneath the ceiling light heard the words somewhere deep, deep below the awful force that was driving it. It understood them. And it cared. And it wanted to spare Walt whatever pain it could, because it didn't require pain. Only death. And dismemberment. Its soul had become the soul of anarchy and disorder; it was a rabid thing that no virus had ever touched. And so it whimpered something unintelligible and swept down on Walt Morgan as rapidly as sound. And in that moment it forgot its caring, it forgot the dregs of humanness quivering in some small, grimy room deep within its brain. And it ripped Walt's cheek away, so the cheekbone was bared and Walt felt an incredible, searing pain there, and he screamed, "No, please!" though it was almost instantly unintelligible because of the blood pouring into his throat. He clung hard to his sheaf of Employee Evaluation Charts. And through the agony of pain and terror drenching him, he saw that the creature ripping away at him had what looked like breasts beneath the short, matted, reddish fur covering its body. And if his mouth had not been hanging open anyway-because his jaw muscles were gone-it would have hung open in awe at this. But then his jaw was gone, too; he heard it being ripped away, which made a sound almost exactly like the sound of hard snow being crunched underfoot. Then he heard his jaw hit the wall farther down the corridor; and he heard himself scream, "No, please, no pain, please!" But of course, no one else heard it, not even the thing tearing away at him, because by then everything from the bottom of his nose to the top of his chest was gone. And he still clung hard to his Employee Evaluation Charts.
The thing ate him. Much of him, anyway. His intestines, his brain, his lungs, his heart, his liver, his genitals. This wasn't its usual routine. But, for various reasons, it was very hungry.
And when, in its human state, it woke up inside the little room marked "AIR," it looked down at its sticky, red, human nakedness. And it wept. Then it washed itself as well as it could in a washbasin there and climbed into a pair of overalls hanging from a hook near the washbasin.